Francesco said:
Interestingly, two of my S1 DTiVos went GSOD this week. The 40 GB GXCEBOT (second 40 Gig drive in it, it's already a few years old) managed to repair itself in about a day. My main Philips, however, appears dead. 24 hours and no change. It's a 200 Gig Seagate, about 15 months old. No symptoms before the GSOD. We had a bad electrical storm the other morning, but this one is on a UPS (and no clocks were flashing 12:00 anywhere in the house).
I have seen this with Tivos. If they get started/restarted (power fluctuation) it scrambles the data on the hard drive. That is why alot of people use UPS systems on their DVR products.
Think of it, like a PC or MAC. You never power up and power down fast. When I tell my clients to reboot the pc, it's power off, count to 30, then power up.
The GXCEBOT that finally died, was upgraded in late 2001 or early 2002. I could tell because the 60GB hard drive was mfg'd in DEC 2001. It ran non-stop since that time. OVer the last 6 months, the drives were getting louder and louder.
Then one day, when to change the channel, and it was almost like the page down button on the guide was stuck. When I powered down the unit, and powered it up, both LEDs on the front were flashing a continuous yellow.
Lucky for me, I was replacing an old PC in the house, and used the old 120GB drive in it's place.
I have not used a 200GB+ drive in a Series I or Series II Tivo. Sure I put an additional 250GB in my HR10-250 as a Drive-B, but at the time, 500GB drives were not readily available in 2004 when I put in the HR10-250. Now, single drives are the preferred method of upgrading.
Even in my new HR20, I replaced the factory 320 with a 500GB internal. Works like a top.
One last thought, I have seen "bad guide (corrupted in the stream) data downloads" trigger reboots on the DVRs too.